The main narrative of this film is to highlight the complete lack of corporate responsibility and the tragedies that corporations cause without consequences.
The film follows the Yes Men who pose as corporations to pull elaborate pranks to highlight the faults of corporations. It’s activism through humor. It’s an easy watch for the film is humorous and it does have emotional appeal. The Bhopal incident isn’t something easy to ignore.
This film draws out corporate responsibility, corporate influence, media influence and some legal issues.
This film is very interesting for a few reasons. One the film is titled the Yes Men fix the world. Yet every prank they pull completely backfires. Either the companies they’re presenting take the completely seriously or the media brands them as villains or the basic point they’re trying to make is ignored. For example when they posed as Dow Chemical and apologized for the Bhopal disaster, all the media did was talk about how cruel the prank was for the false hope it gave. Yet no one talked about how when people thought that Dow Chemical was going to do the right thing their stock plummeted. The Yes Men showed the world that Dow Chemical could fix the Bhopal disaster, all they need is the will to do so. The media says the Yes Men gave false hope but Dow Chemical has given no hope and let the citizens of Bhopal suffer. Also the protecto-ball bug thing for surviving natural disasters completely backfired. Everyone they presented to thought it was real despite the complete absurdity of the product. All this proves to me that there is something seriously wrong with our corporate model.
Overall I wasn’t convinced the Yes Men fixed anything. After all their pranks, nothing really changed. They’ve created awareness and something funny. However they didn’t fix the world. Not one corporation was changed through their pranks. So I doubt the ability of this sort of activism to actually change conditions. It creates awareness and comedic relief but not much beyond that.
The audience best addresses those under corporate influence. So third world countries, the US, Europe. Corporations have their footprint everywhere, thus a wide network of people would benefit from watching this film.
This film had a good amount of environmental education. For one, the whole Bhopal disaster illustrates how damage can increase with time from the disaster. The chemicals released into the air have plagued citizens since. Those who weren’t even born yet or there during the disaster still suffer from its effects. The environmental education in this film is as adequate as it can be while still having the film remain true to its original theme of the Yes Men trying to fix the world.
The film doesn’t suggest any individual action to be taken. However I would suggest voting with your dollar in an effort to support the better businesses out there. Also more mass demonstration would be helpful too. Like occupy wall street except with a much more defined purpose.
The Yes Men